An addendum to Capitalism and Healthcare.

June 27, 2010 at 9:09 am (Blogs, Medicine)

Atlas Shrugged brings up an interesting conundrum involving medicine.

After a plane crash, the heroine receives medical care in Atlantis from a doctor who has subscribed to the pure free market capitalist ideology. It is, of course, praised as a virtue in the book, and I can see its point… except in the field of medicine.

The problem as I see it is that capitalistic medicine betrays the very core of capitalism: choice, and freedom to make that choice as one pleases. As the book points out, freedom to choose at the point of a gun is not freedom at all. And what could possibly be a better parallel for “at the point of a gun,” than being at deaths door for any medical reason? When faced with a decision between money and life, who in their right mind would choose money? That sounds like extortion to me. No different than the extortion practiced by the villains (the government, the people) in the book.

The fact is that, while there is something to the idea of attracting the best and brightest to the field of medicine based on capitalistic ($!) incentives, the notion of medicine at its core is incongruous with capitalism. For example, the modern Hippocratic oath states, “I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required… I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.” While the integrity of the oath itself is questionable in this day and age, the spirit in which it is given seems to hold true in general. Wouldn’t it spoil the message if the oath read, “… with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm. Except those who do not deserve care based on my judgment or their ability to pay me, as they are parasites on the back of civilization.”